Laurence Tribe

Do Harvard-trained lawyers deserve to have any portion of their student loans canceled under the Biden administration’s new debt-relief plan? That’s the question some are…

Harvard Law School professor @tribelaw tells CNN’s @wolfblitzer that the unredacted portions of the Mar-a-Lago affidavit show “overwhelming evidence” of serious federal crimes. Watch here:…

Commentary by Laurence Tribe on classified documents not being returned by Trump after repeated request.

American Friends of Rabin Medical Center presents its monthly leaders forum, Global Connections with Robert Siegel: Navigating the New Normal, on society, the economy, real…

Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to legally block the Department of Justice (DOJ) from reviewing documents seized at Mar-a-Lago is likely doomed, according to a…

Former President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit demanding the return of documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, arguing that the feds did…

An op-ed co-written by Laurence Tribe: Jan. 6 taught us how fragile our republic is. It survived because a few stalwart Republican officials put country…

Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in New York’s investigation into his business’s finances. Of course, the defeated former president and…

An article co-written by Laurence Tribe: Sen. Lindsey Graham faces his courthouse moment of truth. On Aug. 15, Atlanta federal District Court judge Leigh Martin…

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, 80, is a professor emeritus at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1968, counting among his former students Barack…

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell speaks to Harvard constitutional law Professor Laurence Tribe about new details of the Justice Department investigation into the classified documents that were…

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, 80, is a professor emeritus at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1968, counting among his former students Barack…

The leak of a draft majority opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion, was an unprecedented breach in a process typically shrouded in secrecy and a blow to the nation’s highest court, which in recent years has been plagued by questions about its impartiality from both the left and the right. In a statement released Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, but insisted that it was not final. He called the leak a “singular and egregious breach” and said that he has directed the marshal of the court to investigate its source. The Gazette spoke with Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School, about the leak, how it might have happened, and what it could mean for the court’s reputation and the outcome of the case. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: Nobody will soon forget where they were when they got Monday’s news: The right of women to control their own bodies and to decide whether and when to have a child will no longer belong to them if the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade becomes law this summer. But there is more. Reading the draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, you quickly learn that all the rights people have long taken for granted — like the rights to decide whom to marry, whether to use birth control, with whom to have sex, how to raise your children, and an endless list of other freedoms — will no longer be protected unless you can point to language in the Constitution expressly guaranteeing those rights, or convince five Supreme Court justices that they are “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe is warning Tuesday that if the draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito becomes law more than the right to a safe abortion is at risk: Same sex marriage, access to contraception, and other “unenumerated” rights could also come to an end. Tribe raised the possibility of wider implications the nation could face in the wake of the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion purportedly written by Alito on the court’s pending decision on a Mississippi state law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Mississippi law does not have any exceptions victims of rape, incest or if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. ... “Predictable next steps after the Alito opinion becomes law: a nationwide abortion ban, followed by a push to roll back rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, sexual privacy, and the full array of textually unenumerated rights long taken for granted,’' Tribe wrote.

Democratic lawmakers and constitutional scholars say the leaked Supreme Court decision that appears to overturn abortion rights could lead to overturning the right to same-sex marriage and other civil rights. Part of the opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, explicitly references Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage, and Lawrence v. Texas, a decision that legalized sodomy. ... Legal scholar Laurence Tribe echoed Ocasio-Cortez's statement noting "predictable next steps" if the leaked opinion officially becomes law. "A nationwide abortion ban, followed by a push to roll back rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, sexual privacy, and the full array of textually unenumerated rights long taken for granted," Tribe tweeted.

Social media was quickly afire Monday night after an unprecedented leak showed the U.S. Supreme Court has circulated a draft opinion that would overturn two key abortion rights precedents. The draft acquired by Politico was written by Justice Samuel Alito, and would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The decision would cap off Mississippi’s defense of its ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a case that eventually morphed into a call to overturn the two landmark decisions. ... >> Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School: “If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.” (Twitter)

A complicated legal case has been reduced to a provocative headline: “Can a public high school coach pray publicly?” The takes were just as hot in reply. “Jesus said to pray in a ‘closet,’ not on the 50-yard line,” read an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, while The Atlantic implored: “Let Coach Kennedy Pray.” ... “The court is moving in the direction of encouraging religion to enter the public square and to infuse government. And there never has been a period since the 19th century when the court was that willing to just let the wall of separation between church and state down,” Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, said.

Republicans are planning to steal the 2024 presidential election a conservative judge has warned. Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe joins Joy Reid on what he says, "is being bandied about as the technique that they hope to use if they get Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Alito and Thomas on board... to take the next election regardless of who wins."

President Biden proposed a $30 billion aid package to Ukraine, “a vast increase in America’s commitment to defeating Russia in Ukraine.” Biden said, The cost of this fight is not cheap. But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen. We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine. ... But as Professor [Laurence] Tribe noted in an NYTimes op-ed last week (“$100 Billion. Russia’s Treasure in the US Should Be Turned Against Putin), the US has seized and liquidated assets of sovereign nations on several prior occasions and has the authority to do so here. Professor Tribe tweeted in response to Biden’s proposal, saying Biden’s proposal to let US authorities liquidate assets of Russian oligarchs and donate the proceeds to Ukraine seeks broad new legal powers that ironically aren’t needed to liquidate even more US dollars from Russia’s sovereign accounts in the US.